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About the Book

About the Book

Six months after the events of IN THE WOODS, Detective Cassie
Maddox is still trying to recover. She’s transferred out of
the Murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam
O’Neill, but she’s too badly shaken to make any
commitment either to him or to her career. Then Sam calls her to
the scene of his new case: a young woman found stabbed to death in
a small town outside Dublin.

The dead girl’s ID says her name is Lexie Madison --- the
identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. And
she looks exactly like Cassie.

With no leads, no suspects no clue to
‘Lexie’s’ real identity, Cassie’s old
undercover boss, Frank Mackey, spots the opportunity of a lifetime.
They can tell the media and the girl’s friends that the stab
wound wasn’t fatal, and send Cassie undercover in her place
--- to find out information the police would never hear, and to
tempt the killer out of hiding to finish the job. At first Cassie
thinks this is the craziest idea she’s ever heard, but
gradually she’s seduced by the thought of working on a murder
investigation again, by the victim’s life --- doing a post
grad degree in English and sharing the huge, ramshackle Whitethorn
House with a strange, tight-knit group of friends --- and by the
mystery of the victim herself.

As she is drawn into Lexie’s world and uncovers layer
after layer of her secrets, Cassie’s confidence begins to
come back. But Lexie’s secrets run deeper than anyone
imagined; at least one of her friends is becoming suspicious, and
all of them would do almost anything to protect their home; Sam has
discovered a generations-old feud between the locals and the
inhabitants of Whitethorn House; and Frank is starting to suspect
that Cassie’s growing emotional involvement could be putting
the whole investigation at risk…